“You’ve just got to be in the game and know why you’re in the game,” said Bec Boxshall (pictured above), senior account manager with Simplex Insurance Solutions.
Boxshall was explaining how she overcomes the insurance industry’s image problem when she’s dealing with potential clients.
Boxshall works remotely from the Kyneton area in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges. Sometimes insurance brokers have unusual reasons for joining the profession. Most of the time their career move into the insurance industry goes something like this:
“I am an insurance broker because I just fell in the job and loved it,” said Boxshall. “I did not grow up thinking that I was going to be an insurance broker or even that’ I’d work in an office.”
She started working as a broker, said Boxshall, because it was convenient.
“Then I fell in love with it,” she said.
Insurance coverages for the agriculture industry are her speciality.
“I’ve always been on a bit of land and farming has always been in my blood so, for me, it was a no brainer to focus on that,” said Boxshall.
Insurance Business asked if her focus had anything to do with liking a particular agricultural sector, perhaps vineyards and winemaking, growing wheat or even farm machinery.
“It would definitely be the clients for me,” said Boxshall. “Farming clients are such down to earth, trustworthy people.”
That sense of trust works the other way too, she said.
“I’ve also never come across a farmer that hasn’t trusted me – even outside my work,” said Boxshall. “So it really is the people for me.”
IB asked about those occasions when she does have to work to convince a potential client of her worth. Perhaps because of the well-known image problem the insurance industry still suffers from? How does Boxshall overcome that?
“It honestly just comes down to training and you’ve got to know your job so well,” she said. “If someone is there questioning you on the spot about, for example, why they should go through a broker and not just the direct market, and what we’re going to do for them - you just need to back yourself.”
She said that involves being able to explain the quality of what you are offering.
“We’ve gone through every single policy wording to make sure that clients are going to be covered and in the time of a claim not have any hidden traps,” she said.
IB asked what Boxshall sees as her biggest, current insurance challenge right now?
“The challenge is always going to be premium, especially for farms - it can be quite hefty,” she said. “That’s where having a broker come out and assess everything, view their property and their situation and provide that relationship - then they don’t mind paying a higher premium, if they know they’ve really been looked after.”
Boxshall said the willingness to pay a higher premium for an intermediated, broker offering is “especially” so given the frequent media reports of insurers failing customers with their directly sold coverages.
“People rely on you for peace of mind,” she said.
Boxshall’s offerings focus on farm packs that provide a bundle of coverages together. Many of her clients have crop insurance for their locally grown canola, wheat or corn.
IB recently spoke with Boxshall’s colleague, Corey Rule about why he is an insurance broker.
“There’s never a boring moment in the broking industry,” said Ballarat-based Rule. “Honestly, I find that the most interesting thing about my job is dealing with a variety of people.”
Rule acknowledged that coverage issues are growing as insurers consider more risks hard to place. However, he was inspired rather than deterred by this challenge. Like Boxshall, he said relationships are key.
“The industry is becoming more difficult with more risks being considered hard-to-place but that is where the relationship component of our work shines through,” he said.
Rule suggested that in these situations, the broker’s relationships with both the client and the underwriter play a very important and constructive role.
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